Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 6) - Chapter 25 - Time to Change the Playing Field

A fraction of a second before the Demon of the Depths broke through the ice, Xavier flew straight upward, toward the clouds he knew would take him out of the tentacle-mouth’s range. He didn’t want to engage with the enemy until he had access to his cores once more.

Those damned tentacle-mouths were fast, and they were on him the instant the ice broke. Xavier’s portals drifted along behind him, keeping apace, and as fast as the tentacle-mouths were, they weren’t able to catch up to him.

Only a second had passed when he cleared through the clouds. The Demon of the Depths released a roar of outrage. Xavier knew, any moment, it would start firing ice-shards and ice-spears. Xavier might be forced to use his portals earlier than he would like—that would risk the enemy destroying them.

Which was why he was glad he would be able to cast them again.

As Xavier suspected, the tentacle-mouths began firing their ice-spears, straight from their mouths. Xavier began to dodge the attacks when something occurred to him. The moment he had that thought, or even a fraction of a second before he did, the Lost Bone of a Dead God transformed into a shield.

The ice-spears weren’t strong enough to penetrate the shield. He made it grow until it was large enough to cover his entire body. The ice-spears’ impact knocked him back each time one hit him, but that was all they did. He didn’t take any damage whatsoever, and the shield held up perfectly.

Another few seconds passed as Xaver flitted through the air, deflecting shards with his shield. He’d never even realised he could make Lost Bone of a Dead God this large—the ice-spears couldn’t even hit his wings.

Once he could feel the connection to his cores again, Xavier smiled. He cast Body Cultivation, cycled Celestial Energy through his body, and felt the power rip through him. His arms held the shield stronger than before. His wings beat more powerfully. The ice-spears barely made him budge when they crashed into his shield.

Time to change the playing field.

Xavier cast Time Alteration.

The time dilation field appeared around him. The instant it did, he shifted the shield into something else—a bow.

He still had tons of bone arrows in his Storage Ring. With each enemy he’d killed, he’d looted their corpses and made more bone arrows from their remains. It was gruesome work, but it was necessary.

There was also something else he decided to incorporate into his arsenal—a modification to the arrows.

This was something he worked on as he made his way up the mountain, toward the peak, taking down all the groups of Amalgamons. Xavier didn’t use his bow as heavily as he had the first time he’d cleared this floor, only bringing it out whenever he wished to test a modification.

The modifications he was making to the arrows were that he was inscribing runes into their shafts. Before this, the art of inscribing wasn’t something that had actually affected his combat. It was something that he was interested in—something that he was learning more about. And, with what he’d seen runes capable of, it was clearly an important thing for him to learn.

But though he’d inscribed some runes into his armour, he’d never inscribed runes into a weapon.

Xavier had inscribed three runes into the arrows.

The runes he’d inscribed into these arrows were fairly basic ones. Xavier was still learning to become a better Inscriber, and basic was about all he could manage at this time.

The first rune he’d inscribed into the arrows’ shafts was the rune for Wind. This allowed the arrows to travel faster and also meant that they would be more accurate as they could ignore the natural forces of the wind altering their trajectory. If an enemy beast or Denizen cast a wind spell, they would still be able to knock his arrow out of the way—but one day, his inscribing ability might become strong enough to negate even that.

The second rune was the rune for Fire. This would give the arrows a bit of fire damage. How much fire damage was loosely based on his Intelligence attribute.

What he really wanted was to create an explosive arrow—something that detonated on impact with the enemy. While he knew that was possible, he was nowhere near ready for something like that.

The arrows doing fire damage meant he’d needed to use one less against the Amalgamons—it didn’t make a huge difference, but every difference counted for something.

The final rune was one he was still struggling to get to work.

It was the rune for Time.

He was nowhere near ready to actually use a rune like this, but he figured the only way he would become ready was by trying.

The Time rune was supposed to be able to alter the time stream which the item it was inscribed into was in. This didn’t work in the same way as Time Prison, where someone was locked out of that timeline, unable to be attacked—these changed the item’s perception of time, but it could still interact with the world around it.

It was a little complicated, but it basically meant—if he could ever get it to work—that the rune would allow the arrow to travel faster or slower based on the time stream it was following.

This would allow Xavier to loose the arrow out of his time dilation field and have it keep going, synchronised to the time inside the field. He would be able to watch the arrow impact his enemies.

Xavier had trouble believing such a thing was even possible. How could a simple rune cause something so profound to happen? But he kept having to remind himself of the Hell Moon. Of the runes etched beneath the stone all over that place—that they were what made it work, and that it was doing something even more unimaginable than what he was attempting.

And not only that—he had to remind himself of the very runes he’d seen in his mind. The patterns that made up the different spells he used. Runes were the reason he could use his spells in the first place. The System used runes like a programming language. The coding language of the universe.

In theory, runes might be capable of doing just about anything.

So Xavier forced himself to believe it would be possible, because he knew that, soon enough, it would be.

Right now, however, it was just a pipe dream.

Xavier focused on his enemy.

Hovering above the clouds inside of his time dilation field, he was in a far superior position to the last time he’d faced the Demon of the Depths. He couldn’t let that make him complacent, however. He needed to be aware of the Demon of the Depths’ capabilities—when it had 1 percent health, it would raise that health back up to 50 percent.

Then, when its health hit 5 percent after that, it would sacrifice itself and create a massive beam of energy—one that Xavier wouldn’t be able to save himself from this time.

He couldn’t use Summon Otherworldly Spirit. He hadn’t gained another level since he’d cast the spell, and the cooldown—which always varied—had given him three weeks. The spells that he’d had from the Spirit of Protection would not be at his disposal for this time around.

That meant he couldn’t allow his enemy to use the beam against him.

He had plans for that.

There was also the problem of the Demon of the Depths being able to destroy his portals.

Xavier nocked the arrow he’d summoned from his Storage Ring and took aim against his enemy. He targeted the nearest tentacle-mouths first, loosing arrows straight down their open gullets.

Though his time dilation field was an incredible advantage, he reminded himself that the moment the enemy touched the field, they would be inside it.

Which meant if he expanded the field around one of the tentacle-mouths, he was expanding it around the whole monster. The Demon of the Depths would suddenly be up to the same speed as himself.

Xavier didn’t know how much damage his arrows did to his enemy, but there was only one way to find out.

He had thousands of arrows in his Storage Ring. Right now, he intended to loose half of them, then see what damage he’d done. Hopefully, that would be enough to bring the bastard thing’s health down to 1 percent—though he sorely doubted that.

Xaiver loosed arrow after arrow at the tentacle-mouths nearby, then he flew down through the clouds, careful to keep his time dilation field close.

He flew close to each of the tentacle-mouths that had been thrust high into the air to pursue him. One by one, he loosed arrows at them. The arrows pushed through his time dilation field but froze in the air directly outside of it—and directly in front of their targets.

They wouldn’t move until Xavier dropped the field or altered the flow of time within it. But the closer he loosed the arrows to his target, the more likely the arrows would actually hit their mark—the Demon of the Depths simply wouldn’t be fast enough to dodge the arrows.

When Xavier had loosed arrows into each of the tentacle-mouths he flew farther down, toward the river of ice that had been shattered. Much of the demon’s massive body was still stuck under that ice. Xavier flew as close as he dared and unleashed the rest of the allotted arrows.

With thousands of runed bone arrows loosed, and thousands more still in his inventory ready for the second barrage, Xavier flew back into the air above the clouds.

Inside his time dilation field, he could alter the flow of time, slowing down or speeding it up to whatever degree he wished—he could also match the time speed that was happening outside of the field, or make what was happening outside the field move in slow motion. Though he’d only used a few of these things to his advantage.

He was about to change that.

Xavier influenced the flow of time. He only wished for a split-second to pass outside the bubble. To do this, he altered the flow of time only very slightly, until it was moving forward a fraction of a fraction of a second, and the thousands of arrows he’d loosed were moving toward their targets one millimetre at a time.

Just to be safe, Xavier transformed the Lost Bone of a Dead God into a shield once more—a shield that would stop any errant ice-spears from impacting him, though it should have been impossible for that to happen, he thought it was a worthwhile precaution.

Thousands of runed bone arrows sunk through the hard flesh of the Level 399 Demon of the Depths. As it took damage, Xavier was able to spot its health bar pop up over its massive body with the use of his Health Seer skill.

Bit by bit, the beast’s health was reduced. Slowly, at first, then all at once. Fire burst from the arrows, searing the demon’s flesh in thousands of places. A loud, screeching roar began in the beast’s hundreds of throats, a roar that sounded like thunder and dying cats distorted by the crawl of time flowing at this pace.

When the damage was done, Xavier reined time back in until it looked to be frozen outside of the bubble one more. 

He released a breath. 

The demon’s health hadn’t lowered as much as he’d hoped, but it had still dropped by a massive amount—those thousands of arrows weren’t as strong as using every soul at his disposal and casting Soul Strike, but 40 percent damage against a beast like this was still insane, especially since he’d dealt it in a split-second of real time elapsing.

And he hadn’t spent a single soul to manage it.

I just need some more bone arrows. If I’d been using these longer…

But Xavier’s habit of placing every beast corpse into his Storage Ring had stopped when they simply wouldn’t fit, and he didn’t have easy access to a System Shop or somewhere else to dump them.

I really need a Personal Space. I wonder how those work…

Then again, maybe he was looking at this all wrong. What if there was a way to create arrows out of Celestial Energy? Or Spirit Energy, Strength Energy, or any of the energies. Then, he could cultivate inside a time dilation field and theoretically have access to an infinite number of arrows…

Though those particular arrows wouldn’t be influenced by the runes he was now learning to use, they would still be amazingly powerful.

Xavier shook his head. Such a thing sounded insane.

Then again, his entire life sounded insane. Ordering his mind, he made sure to file that idea away. Now wasn’t the right time to experiment—unless he was forced to by necessity’s sake.

He needed his full focus to be on this right now.

The Demon of the Depths only has 60 percent of its health remaining.

Xavier knew he had the ability to deal a significant amount of damage to this thing simply by redirecting its attacks—but that was a tactic he knew wouldn’t work twice in one fight.

Would that be enough to get it close to death?

One way to find out.

Once again, Xavier altered the flow of time. This Demon of the Depths was a different one to the beast he’d faced the last time he was in the Thirty-First Descent, but it seemed to act in exactly the same way. Still, he needed to be wary. This wasn’t a tower floor.

Xavier didn’t end the Time Alteration spell. That would have been the height of foolishness. Instead, he shifted time inside the bubble so it moved at roughly one tenth speed outside of it. This allowed the Demon of the Depths to zero in on him. Every single one of its tentacle-mouths began to face him. With his Farscope, Xavier saw the mouths on the thing’s body open up and begin to release a torrent of ice-shards like a machine gun.

Once again, a storm of ice-shards and ice-spears made their way toward Xavier. This time, they looked like they were crawling through the air they moved so slow.

The beast was still releasing its screeching roar, a desperate sound that tore from hundreds of mouths and pummelled against his eardrums.

The shards and spears flew for Xavier, but Xavier was prepared. He threw one of the portals in front of him and made it grow as large as he needed it. The twin portal was by the Demon of the Depth’s main body, just like the first time he’d done this.

An even louder roar sounded when the attacks slid through the portal and came out the other one, slamming into the beast. Xavier felt the blood dropping from his ears.

He adjusted the flow of time yet again, making time outside the bubble flow at roughly one one-hundredth speed to him. He carved the time dilation field, flying away from the portal still left in the air.

Patiently, Xavier watched the health bar over the demon’s head drain all the way to 1 percent. A smile titled the sides of his lips in that moment.

As he’d expected, the demon glowed in a brilliant light. Its health was about to rocket back up to 50 percent. Xavier wondered if there was anything he could do to stop that—it would certainly be convenient if he could interrupt his enemy’s spell.

Further ice-shards and ice-spears were still hitting the beast.

And yet Xavier, watching the health bar closely, didn’t see a change.

While the bright light was active, the Demon of the Depths was invulnerable to attack. At least as far as Xavier could tell. That meant whatever he threw at the beast in this moment would be an absolute waste of his resources.

He sped up time within the bubble, so it was once again frozen outside of it, and took a moment to think.

This wasn’t the first time the beast had appeared invulnerable. When the demon prepared to perform its beam spell, its body had rippled and changed as it had moved all its mouths together. He’d flung attacks at it but hadn’t been able to do any damage.

This appeared to be much the same.

Xavier frowned. This damned beast had two spells that allowed it to become invulnerable. He wished he the ability to disrupt an enemy’s spell—that would save him a lot of effort in this fight. A fight that he would have to do a total of a thousand times.

He could steal the energy from an enemy—but he’d tried that last time with this beast. He hadn’t been able to pull near enough energy to actually hinder the Demon of the Depths, and he certainly hadn’t softened the beast’s mind for Xavier’s Willpower Infusion spell.

Wings slowly flapping as he hovered high above the snowy mountain peak in the air, Xavier’s eyes widened as an idea occurred to him.

A smile spread onto his lips—it was time to try something new.